Review: Bully by Penelope Douglas
Rating: ★★½
Release Date: 17th June 2013
Genre(s): New Adult Romance
I just want to start off by saying I really wanted to like this book, especially after reading Birthday Girl by Penelope Douglas and loving it. But in my opinion, it’s just not on the same level unfortunately.
Bully follows Tate and Jared, childhood best friends and now enemies. Jared makes it his life mission to bully, humiliate andborderline emotionally torture Tate - until one day, after spending a year in France, she begins to fight back. How will Jared cope?
First of all, the plot was great: a fast-paced bully romance which features enemies to lovers - fabulous. The angst, the drama, the tension, was all executed perfectly. I had a throughly great time reading this book, but I just cannot ignore all of the bad aspects.
The biggest downfall of this book was the characters; the majority (if not all) did not feel well developed and did not experience any personal growth throughout the novel. So, let’s talk about Jared… Yeah, ok, he’s attractive (and he knows it). He’s also a bullyand I felt like his excuses were nowhere near good enough to justify bullying Tate (who he supposedly loved) for years. He seems to think because he’s hot and has girls falling at his feet, that seems to make things okay? Also considering Tate, the main character, is supposed to be likeable, she just seemed like your average annoying teenager, to be brutally honest. Tate could singlehandedly take down the feminism - she was constantly slut-shaming and dragging other girls down (to make herself feel better) and that was just gross to read. But, my least favourite character (possibly ever) has to be KC, she is the worst best friend to Tate. And personally I felt some of her actions were inexcusable and had she been my friend (IRL), I would never have forgiven her.
A further issue is that as this book is classed as new adult, I would've expected the setting to be in college not high school, and it just felt a bit icky having multiple sex scenes about high school children (it may be okay if you are of a similar age, but I am a lot older than that and it just felt weird).
I would still recommend this book, as it was a super fun and quick read, but just understand there are some pretty aggravating characters and aspects of the plot.
Bully follows Tate and Jared, childhood best friends and now enemies. Jared makes it his life mission to bully, humiliate and
First of all, the plot was great: a fast-paced bully romance which features enemies to lovers - fabulous. The angst, the drama, the tension, was all executed perfectly. I had a throughly great time reading this book, but I just cannot ignore all of the bad aspects.
The biggest downfall of this book was the characters; the majority (if not all) did not feel well developed and did not experience any personal growth throughout the novel. So, let’s talk about Jared… Yeah, ok, he’s attractive (and he knows it). He’s also a bullyand I felt like his excuses were nowhere near good enough to justify bullying Tate (who he supposedly loved) for years. He seems to think because he’s hot and has girls falling at his feet, that seems to make things okay? Also considering Tate, the main character, is supposed to be likeable, she just seemed like your average annoying teenager, to be brutally honest. Tate could singlehandedly take down the feminism - she was constantly slut-shaming and dragging other girls down (to make herself feel better) and that was just gross to read. But, my least favourite character (possibly ever) has to be KC, she is the worst best friend to Tate. And personally I felt some of her actions were inexcusable and had she been my friend (IRL), I would never have forgiven her.
A further issue is that as this book is classed as new adult, I would've expected the setting to be in college not high school, and it just felt a bit icky having multiple sex scenes about high school children (it may be okay if you are of a similar age, but I am a lot older than that and it just felt weird).
I would still recommend this book, as it was a super fun and quick read, but just understand there are some pretty aggravating characters and aspects of the plot.
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